Of the Waters
by Drag0nst0rm
Summary: The water madness took Bella's mother. She's determined not to let it take her too. Unfortunately, on an adventure, that's easier said than done. (Always a girl!Bilbo Baggins/Thorin.)


**A/N: I don't own The Hobbit. Happy birthday, MegMarch1880!**

* * *

Ulmo had crafted them from sea foam and sand.

He hadn't been trying to create life, not truly. He just wanted to watch the figures dance upon the waves.

Eru Iluvatar's fond exasperation when he turned his attention to the scene suggested Ulmo might be deceiving himself on that point.

"First Aule, then Yavanna, and now you," the gentle voice said. "If the others continue in this manner, Arda will be crowded indeed."

Ulmo felt the gentle rebuke keenly. "I didn't meant to attempt life," he protested. "I only wanted to watch them dance."

"And they shall dance," Eru promised. "With no one to pull the strings. But they must wait a little longer."

So the small figures rested beneath the waves until it was their turn to wake.

* * *

They were small because all he had known was that mortals would be small when compared to the forms the Valar preferred, and they were rounded around the edges because that was the shape the seam foam tended towards.

They awoke on the ocean shore even as the dwarves awoke from the stone. They danced under the stars as Eru had promised with all the joy bound into their creation flowing out of them.

Ulmo watched them from the shallows.

_I'll watch over you, my children,_ he promised, and the waves whispered his words. _All will be well._

* * *

All was not well in a general sense, but it went well enough for the hobbits. When the coast became too exposed for safety, they followed a river inland. The water warned them when danger came near, and it fell generously on their crops.

They were small and hid easily, and they let the war pass them by for as long as they could.

But when the earth started breaking apart beneath them and the waters rose, even they could hide no longer.

Ulmo warned them of his waves and told them where to flee.

_Safe, he promised them, relieved they'd made it to this hillside. You'll be safe here._

And they _were_ safe from the wave he had sent.

They weren't safe from the waves that rose up as the very earth broke apart. Even Ulmo himself couldn't predict all of those.

* * *

The water rose, boiling from the heat of the lava that poured forth from Morgoth's forge-mountains, and steam, just as dangerous, rose from it.

Ulmo realized too late what was in the water's path. The hobbits' few sentinels saw but hesitated. They'd been assured it was safe -

Terror overwhelmed that pleasant certainty, and they fled, crying out for their people to follow.

Hobbits could hold their breath for a long time.

Under the hungry maw of the scalding waves, no one could have held it long enough.

* * *

The few survivors huddled together and went inland.

The rivers and streams still whispered to them, but they had learned not to listen.

They no longer trusted the waves, no matter how gentle.

* * *

Hobbits were stubborn, but they did not have long memories. They kept safely away from the shore long after they had forgotten why, and slowly they forgot how to listen to the water when it spoke.

When they heard rumors of an island swallowed entirely by a wave, they shook their heads and tutted. It was only to be expected, really. You couldn't trust the sea.

Their crops still flourished under a perfect bounty of rain.

* * *

By the time Bella Baggins was born, it was generally accepted by society that the Brandywine River was incapable of truly speaking, but it was better not to listen too closely, lest you get funny ideas.

Her mother listened to the water. She said she could hear it murmuring in her dreams. She said It showed her glimpses of wonderful things.

Then Belladonna Baggins went out in a little boat like the Brandybucks were wont to do, and she tried to get close enough to hear it properly.

The boat tipped over.

By those days, very few hobbits could swim.

* * *

It was the water madness, folk whispered. Belladonna was not the first it had claimed.

It was heartsickness which claimed Bungo, not the water, but it nailed home the lesson all the same.

Bella Baggins stayed far away from the river and arranged for someone else to bring her filled buckets from the well.

The water whispered in her dreams, but she buried her toes in the earth and refused to listen.

* * *

"You've a water-tongue," she told Gandalf crossly when he showed up at her door with thirteen dwarves, promising gold and adventure. So many pretty promises, luring unsuspecting hobbits to their deaths.

"I've been told worse," Gandalf said dryly. "I don't know what your people have against water, Bella, but I assure you, there are far worse things in this world."

Bella set her teacup down in its saucer with far too much force for politeness. "I'm sure you're right," she said in a trembling voice, "but none of those things killed my mother."

She was quite recovered from her fainting fit now, but she was more certain than ever that she would not be going on any adventures.

* * *

Adventures, she concluded a few days later, were messy, hungry things, and adventurers were worse. She didn't think she'd seen Thorin smile even once, but Balin's story made at least some sense of that. Still, the whole thing was highly uncomfortable, and this business with the trolls didn't help matters.

She stared at the boiling pot above the fire and tried not to imagine being thrown in alive.

There might be just as many terrible things in this world that Gandalf had said there were, but most of them came back to water sooner or later.

A number of miles later, the Storm Giants only proved her point.

* * *

The goblins bothered her far more than the fire. She felt the heat, of course, but distantly.

Hobbits were slow to drown, but they took even longer to burn.

She had never tested that theory on anything stronger than a warm stove, admittedly, but the same principle seemed to hold.

She hoped it held for the dwarves as well. The fire had spread from the pinecones to the limbs of the tree now and was licking ever upward. Thorin was moving away from it -

No, Thorin was moving towards that big pale orc because he was an adventurer, and that was apparently synonymous with being insane.

The other trees had caught fire now. One was creaking alarmingly.

"Thorin!" Dwalin yelled in warning.

Thorin charged forward. The tree collapsed behind him, flames forming a wall, cutting him off from help.

And he was going to need help.

Bella wasn't sure if the dwarves could pass through that fire, but their tree was leaning alarmingly now, and the others were all being forced to clutch their branches lest they be dropped off the cliff.

She took a deep breath.

Well. If she was going to act insane, at least it wouldn't be water-madness.

She dropped to the ground and ran through the fire.

* * *

"I have never been so wrong," Thorin said, and he wrapped her in the most bone-crushing hug she'd ever experienced.

Still, it was - nice. Even if it was the last straw for her very scorched cloak.

She sighed at the blackened material as scraps of it came loose and floated down to her feet.

Thorin frowned. "I had not realized - did it hurt you?"

"Oh, no," she assured him. "Just the cloak. I'm just glad the dress survived . . . "

Kili perked up. "Not hurt at all? Are you fireproof? A fireproof burglar would be perfect!"

Given the dragon, she supposed that would be rather ideal, but sadly, no. "Fire resistant," she corrected hastily before anyone could get any ideas. "Not proof against a dragon, I should think."

"Resistant," Thorin repeated. To say he looked pleased would be overstating things - this was Thorin, after all - but he looked . . . satisfied, perhaps. "Like a dwarf, then."

Bella blinked. She was still unaccustomed to thinking herself anything like a dwarf but in this instance, "I suppose you're right."

* * *

The stream that flowed through Mirkwood was unsettling. There was a different voice murmuring in it than she was used to hearing.

Not that she normally heard the voice of the waters. Of course not.

The waters' murmurs were sweet and heavy. They painted tantalizing images in her mind, but they all vanished before she could savor them. If she could just hear properly . . .

"Bella!"

A hand clamped down on her shoulder. She startled back to alertness and stumbled back quickly when she realized just how close she'd gotten to the water.

"Thank you, Thorin," she said shakily.

"There's something wrong with that stream," Thorin said grimly.

"There's something wrong with this entire forest," Gloin grumbled.

"This is worse," Bella said distantly. She could still hear it calling her. "Don't touch it."

Ten minutes later, Bombur fell in.

* * *

Hunger was bad. Spiders were worse.

But right now, it was elves she was cursing as she made her way invisibly through the dark corridors of the lower levels of the elvish king's palace.

Thorin sat slumped against the bars of his cell, just visible in the dim torch light. He raised his head at the sound of her light footsteps. "Bella?"

"I'm here," she whispered, crouching down beside him.

"What news today?"

She hesitated. She didn't have to do this. She could keep looking, find another way.

But she'd been looking for two weeks. They were running out of time.

"I found a way out," she told him. "There's a party tonight. It's the perfect time."

The perfect time. Just not the perfect route.

* * *

She ignored the dwarves' complaining. Her own terror drowned everything else out. She left it to Thorin to talk them into the barrels.

When it was done, she grabbed the lever and pulled it with all her strength. The trapdoor opened, and the barrels went rolling down into the roaring water below.

It rushed beneath her, hungry and terrifying.

And she would have to jump into it. Without, she now realized, anyone to close her barrel.

She grabbed one of the empty ones as it rolled past. Her fingers shook. She couldn't do this. She couldn't.

Another loose barrel hit her knees from behind. She tumbled forward, still grasping her own barrel desperately. For just one moment, she hung in the air.

Then she was plunging into the icy water.

The barrel bobbed back to the surface, taking her with it, but she barely noticed.

She could hear everything.

_West, go west, there is light and joy and peace -_

_Daughter, my daughter, hear me, hear me that I may save you, there is danger, danger, danger -_

_Fire and withering,_ and the ring in her pocket burned -

_Sea foam dancing but turning to blood -_

_Sorry, sorry, danger, danger,_ and the most incredible sense of love flooded her in a heady rush.

She barely felt it when she crashed into land.

A sense of emptiness washed over her. She could still hear the river talking. If she just went back to it -

She stood for a long moment, old terror warring with new loss.

The pounding of the dwarves in their barrels broke through her haze. She went and opened the first barrel as though in a dream.

Gloin popped out. Grumbling, probably.

She couldn't hear him over the call of the water.

* * *

The dwarves were concerned, she thought, but she couldn't be bothered to do much more than sneeze.

She moved in a daze to the raft when it appeared as if out of nowhere.

Then she sank to the middle of it and desperately covered her ears with her hands.

Someone tried to talk to her. She ignored them.

Listening was the enemy now.

* * *

It took three days for her to come back to herself in Laketown. If the town had been better grounded, perhaps she would have recovered sooner, but as it was, she still heard the whispers, even now.

But she smiled weakly up at Own and shouted into his ear trumpet that she was fine and tried not to wince when a dark faced Thorin entered the room.

"It won't happen again," she said hastily, hoping to cut him off. "Not in the mountain, anyway, and that's the important thing."

"What _did_ happen?" he demanded.

She supposed he deserved an explanation after all this trouble. She pushed herself up on the bed with a sigh. "We call it the water-madness. We all hear the water, though if you're respectable you pretend you don't. For some people, it gets louder and louder until it's all they can hear. And then . . . " She swallowed. "They never want to leave the water." She looked down. "My mother drowned that way."

Thorin looked grim. "And now you hear it too."

"For a while now," she confessed. It was a relief to admit it. "But the river made those things worse."

"The mountain might help," Thorin offered. "There are a few underground springs there, but it's nothing like the river."

"I'll have to leave the mountain eventually," she pointed out.

"Some dwarves managed to go their whole lives without leaving it," he said. His manner had intensified, and she had to look away.

Had he meant that the way it sounded? Staying in the mountain had a certain appeal. Avoiding the river, avoiding the scandal surely building back home . . . Staying with the Company . . .

She shook herself. "I shouldn't bother you with my hobbit nonsense," she said. "Not when there's a dragon to worry about."

"It's not nonsense," Thorin countered. His next words seemed to pain him greatly. "Your's is not the only people to suffer from an illness of the mind. My grandfather had the gold sickness, and it grew until even his own flesh and blood was nothing compared to it." He looked out the window, towards the mountain. "And now I fear that, like you, I will not be spared my family's curse."

She slid off the bed and mangled to join him at the window. "We're quite the pair, aren't we?"

The mountain loomed across the water, promising fire and gold, and maybe, just maybe, a chance to flee a curse.

But even if it did, another curse might wait.

Her hand reached for his. He flinched away for a moment, but then she felt his fingers lace through hers.

"We'll help each other," she promised.

Maybe that would be enough.

* * *

Thorin had been right - the lake felt very distant in the mountain. Dragonfire, so hot she had no illusions of being able to survive it, felt much more present.

But they survived it somehow, and she watched from the wall as Bard's great arrow sent Smaug crashing into the lake.

Water swallowed everything in the end. Even dragons.

Just as Thorin's madness was beginning to swallow him.

She couldn't take Thorin away from the gold like he'd taken her away from the water, but she could take the gold away from him.

Or at least the most important bit.

* * *

The lake whispered to her as she turned to return to the mountain. Its promises sounded a good deal more appealing than facing Thorin's wrath.

But she would not abandon her friends now. Not even for the water.

* * *

Everything that followed was even more unpleasant than expected, and the orcs didn't help matters.

She puffed her way up Raven Hill, desperate to catch up to the others. They'd been scattered by the fighting; Thorin stood alone upon the broken ice, staring down at some fallen foe.

All safe. All that running for nothing.

_No,_ the water warned, still rushing beneath the ice. _Danger, daughter, danger. Help the son of stone, or you shall lose him._

The words came with such an overwhelming wave of love that she stood as frozen as the ice.

_Go!_

She ran. Her bare feet skidded across the ice until she slammed, still invisible, into Thorin.

The impact knocked them both off of their their feet, and the ring tumbled off of her hand. She scrambled to grab it and put it into her pocket before turning back to a stunned Thorin.

A sword burst through the ice where Thorin had been standing. The ice splintered further, and suddenly are patch of ice was tilting, and she was sliding into the frigid water.

"Bella!" Thorin bellowed, and his hand plunged into the water a second too late.

_Take it,_ the water urged. _Take it, take it._

She didn't want to.

_Take it!_

Thorin was half in the water now, head willingly going under to push him arm further down.

The water beneath her pushed her upwards.

Thorin grabbed her weakly outstretched hand.

Suddenly she was on the ice again, gasping.

"Bella? Bella!"

"Hello, Thorin," she said, blinking up at the sky. "Are you sane again?"

He laughed raggedly. "As much as I ever am, I hope. And I owe you a thousand apologies."

She waved this off. Her hand flopped back to the ice. She was shivering violently. "Get me to a fire and all is forgiven."

"A fine plan," he agreed, wincing as he moved. He eyed the water warily. "Is it speaking to you?"

"Probably," she said, "but I'm too tired to listen just now." Her eyes drifted close. "It's the strangest thing," she murmured. "I don't think it wanted me to drown . . . "

_At last,_ Ulmo thought, and he couldn't resist cheating by peeking ahead in the Music, just a bit.

They'd both be just fine.


End file.
